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I friend of mine asked me to fix her computer. Evidently her husband was visiting porn sites and the system is infected. I got the tower and noticed it
was very dirty. The heatsink was completely blocked with dust. Cleaned it and tried to boot. Nothing, can't reach the BIOS no hardware found. First, am I right to assume the CPU is burned out. Second, is it possible to plug the SATA drive into my tower w/o infecting my system?? Win XP on both systems.

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Id hesitate before plugging it into your current system. In theory, as long as you connected it, and scanned everything with a good antivirus before opening any files you should, in theory, be fine, but theres always the chance of your AV missing something. I think, if it were me, I'd hook it up, but boot up off a ubuntu live CD, and then go through the files and back up the ones you want to save-and delete everything else on the drive (Os and everything) That way, theres less chance of your AV missing something when you scan those files. Or, if you wanted to you could go through our malware section and manually remove the viruses/malware from the hard drive-if you dont have a copy of windows to reput on the hard drive.

As far as the computer, theres a variety of things that would cause it not to boot. When you press the button on the front, does anything happen? lights, fans anything?

Im thinking its a possibility-I try not to draw conclusions unless Ive double checked everything. No beeps usually indicates either a board or a PSU (assuming you have a system speaker)-sometimes it could be ram or other cards though, its hard to say. Like eyesee suggested try reseating everything, and if another PSU if possible.

Good point. The thing of it is that comp is 8 years old and my friend doesn't have the $$ to spend on it, nor
do I have the spare parts anymore.
I talked to her today and she is more interested in seeing if her photos/docs can be retrieved from
the HD. So can we go that direction? Connect the infected(she was getting awful popups, redirects)to my comp w/o infecting it? I am just going on what she told me. Or is it a lost cause.

Odd that this happened after you cleaned it.
I am still thinking loose connection.
Have you tried clearing CMOS yet?

You can get her pics etc off fairly easily by connecting the drive to your system and save them onto a jump drive or external hd but I would scan them and your system as well afterward just to be safe.

Ya, like I said dont save any programs off it, and scan any and all files you intend to save before opening them. If you really want to play it safe you can open the files using a linux live CD.

Thanks much

Odd that this happened after you cleaned it.I am still thinking loose connection.Have you tried clearing CMOS yet?

You can get her pics etc off fairly easily by connecting the drive to your system and save them onto a jump drive or external hd but I would scan them and your system as well afterward just to be safe.

I failed to mention that the hardware problem existed before I got the comp. Sorry for the confusion.